Visit Derby’s Well Dressing Trail portraying how Derby Green Spaces were used during First World War.
The Centre is very proud to support a project that examines the home front in Derby during the First World War. led by Derby’s Spiral Arts and Professor Paul Elliott, the project involves working with a group of local residents, interested in the history of Derby, a PHD student and two undergraduates from the University of Derby that are researching Derby’s archives to uncover information about parks and green spaces during First World War. The research information will be used to create ideas for well dressings which will then be on display for the people of Derby.
From Monday 20 June to Friday 25 June, five schools, a youth group, and an over 50s group will all work with Spiral Arts to produce a number of well dressings for exhibition in Derby’s first public park, the Derby Arboretum and extending into the city centre around the Cathedral Quarter.
This intricate art is unique to Derbyshire. Traditionally well dressing frames are soaked in the local river before being packed with clay. A design is marked out onto the clay and then each section is carefully covered with individual flower petals, leaves, seeds, coffee beans, feathers and stones to complete the design.
The trail will be launched at 11am on Saturday 25 June in the Orangery at Derby Arboretum Park and the well dressings will be on display until Sunday 3 July. There will be some well dressings displayed in the Arboretum Park and also well dressings displayed around the city’s Cathedral Quarter – QUAD, Deda, Derby Central Library, Derby Local Studies Library, Derby Cathedral and Derby Tourist Information Centre.
The research will also be used to create a textile banner exhibition in August at the Derby Arboretum Summer Celebration.
2016 sees the centenary of the Sykes-Picot Agreement, the secret agreement by which the Entente powers, chiefly Britain and France, organised their intentions for the Middle East once the Ottoman Empire fell.
It was a significant moment in international relations and the development of the postwar system and is of particular interest at the moment, not just because of the centenary, but also the huge ramifications that it has had on the present day, in the Middle East and beyond.
The Centre intends to use the moment of the centenary to explore and discuss Sykes-Picot, the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the long term impact of the First World War on a region that isn’t always associated with that conflict in the wider public imagination.
Persian man posing for a photograph. Note a truck with British troops in the background. The Service of the 9th Battalion, Royal Warwickshire Regiment in the Persian Campaign, 1918. IWM Q 73032
The Centre’s first public activities will take place in York on the 26th April. There are three linked events taking place, you can book for all three, or for each one individually.
The morning workshop will draw on the King’s Book of York Heroesand local research current, recent and future, focusing on the Middle East. The afternoon will lead on from this to more general discussions of World War One and the Middle East, including Yorkshire’s involvement and implications for today. Famous Yorkies such as Sir Mark Sykes, Gertrude Bell, and even Lawrence of Arabia and Bridlington will attend. ISIS will no doubt be mentioned!
There will be exhibitions throughout the day, along with lots of sources familiar and unfamiliar. We hope the day will generate enthusiasm and interest to follow up these ideas so it has a lasting legacy.
Details are still being confirmed, and may well be changed. Draft programmes are below.
MORNING:
9am: set up exhibits
9.30-10.30: Coffee & Registration: Network and view exhibits
10.30-12.30 (with break): Introduction: Themes of today and of the BABITME conference
The King’s Book of York Heroes.
What is it?
What has been done with it so far? Research from Fulford, Bishopthorpe, Copmanthorpe
What remains to be done? Digitisaton? A digital database? Linking with other data sources?
12.30: Lunch (free if booked). Network and view exhibits
AFTERNOON:
1.30-5.30 (with breaks): Several themes such as the following
Middle East and the decline of the Ottoman Empire, 1900-1920
What happened? Different perspectives (Ottoman, German, Russian, French)
Sykes-Picot (16 May 1916)
Yorkshire links with the Middle East
The East Riding Yeomanry in Egypt and Palestine
Gertrude Bell, Mark Sykes, Wass Reader (a Hull soldier writes home)
Possible future research.
Yorkshire Quakers, pacifism, and the Middle East
Presentations from the Rowntree Society (York)
Contribution from Cyril Pearce (world-renowned expert on the history of pacifism – see below)
Prospects and sources for future research
Sykes Picot Agreement Map
The evening lecture (7.30) relates to pacifism in World War One and is hosted by the Yorkshire Philosophical Society (details here). The speaker, Cyril Pearce, is world-renowned. Workshop attendees will be entitled to attend this lecture without charge.
All events are in central York. Morning and afternoon workshops are at Clements Hall, just 800 yards from York Railway station – turn right as you come out of the station, curve left and go over the bridge, cross in front of Micklegate Bar, then walk 200 yards along Nunnery Lane, turn right along Dale Street, and Clements Hall is at the end on your left. If you are parking, park in Nunnery Lane car park (fees apply).The evening event is in the Yorkshire Museum (see details below).
The entire day links with the themes of the “Borders and Beyond in the Middle East” (BABITME) conference in York in mid-June (details here). Those attending on 26 April will be entitled to free and reduced-fee tickets to BABITME (normal price £100).
We hope that you will decide to stay for the entire day on April 26th, but booking will be possible for each session separately.
As part of UNESCO Nottingham City of Literature, award-winning British writer Pat Barker will be appearing at Nottingham Playhouse on Wednesday 15 June.
Barker is one of the leading novelists of the First World War. She was awarded the Booker Prize for The Ghost Road (1995), the final novel in her much acclaimed World War I Regeneration Trilogy.
Noon Day, the third novel in her Life Class trilogy, which spans the First and Second World Wars, was published in 2015 and she is working on a new novel.
Pat Barker is renowned for her imaginative exploration of war and has regenerated interest in historical figures including the army psychiatrist W.H.R Rivers and artist-surgeon Dr Henry Tonks, as well as war artists in both world wars. As we mark the centenary of the First World War, Barker’s writing has particular and contemporary resonance.
Barker’s novels have been adapted for the stage and filmed in the US and the UK. They are studied in schools and enjoyed by readers across the generations.
Pat Barker will be in conversation with Sharon Monteith, Professor of American Studies at the University of Nottingham, who has followed Barker’s work since the 1980s and written about it since the 1990s. She published Pat Barker (Northcote House and the British Council, 2002), the first critical study of the writer, and co-edited Critical Perspectives on Pat Barker (2005).
Visit Derby’s Well Dressing Trail portraying how Derby Green Spaces were used during First World War.
The trail will be launched at 11am on Saturday 25 June in the Orangery at Derby Arboretum Park and the well dressings will be on display until Sunday 3 July. There will be some well dressings displayed in the Arboretum Park and also well dressings displayed around the city’s Cathedral Quarter – QUAD, Deda, Derby Central Library, Derby Local Studies Library, Derby Cathedral and Derby Tourist Information Centre.
As part of UNESCO Nottingham City of Literature, award-winning British writer Pat Barker will be appearing at Nottingham Playhouse on Wednesday 15 June. 